The metamorphosis

Whether you believe it or not,

the law has become democratic in our parts of the world; the policemen  are visiting households and are fast making friends. I am not joking guys, we are living in the midst of a bloody revolution here. Unfortunately some of  the poor public is seen running for their lives the moment the cops show up.

Alas,  old habits die hard!  Poor policemen, think how their hearts must be bleeding  seeing public  take off  like that.  All this comes of being good and nice!

Well,  can we blame the insensitive  public then ? I have my doubts on it. It has been  genetically coded into them that the police is trouble. This coding is the result of some millinia of experiences.   Usually the cops are not seen  any where near where trouble is brewing. Well, it can be argued that  if they do it’s trouble for the poor citizens in the neighborhood!

The luckless ones who can’t push off at breakneck pace when these white doves of peace appear on the scene and the residents nearby are the normal people destined to suffer. This has been going on for such a long time that the people are a little wary of the new face of the law. To them, nothing has been visibly changed. ‘Wolves in  police clothing’ as one very sane individual puts it.

Their reasoning runs like this.  At least the members of the force are still the same. They would not all become  saints all of a sudden because some one higher up tells them to adopt such spineless practices. Unshakable logic. So they makes themselves scarce to avoid further complications.

Anyway,  our police force is taught to keep the public in abject terror, for their own safety rather than anything else, it is rumoured. The argument is that to control unruly elements in the community, they need to show brutality. For example if they are attacked by a mob the only option of survival is to exhibit extreme violence in dealing with the situation. They would be few in number and  a mob is rowdiness personified.

Thus  they are given the permission to smash the pate of the first man they get hold of in such circumstances, so that  blood would stream from his poor wooden head.  Blood cows the mob and they would scatter diminishing the risk to the policemen and to the public.   But they seem to carry the violence forward in all aspects of police business, and after long experience the public now how the police mind work.

Lately  all has not been well for the police too. The people have become wise to avoid them at any cost and would not open their mouth even if they saw a crime committed in broad day light.  If  anyone,  fired with social responsibility, dares to report it to the police they would become the primary suspect in the incident and the cops would take it easy by fabricating evidence to pin it on them. This has happened before, who say’s the public has a very short memory, no one has a short memory when it comes to their safety.

The cop has a preconceived notion to such situations. If some one reports a crime, it is not out of any public interest, most probably the guy is actively involved in the crime and is trying to cover his tracks up by concealing the real evidence and reporting something else to the police. They are so astoundingly superior in knowledge that the rest of us remain total ignoramuses.

Under such conditions how can the people take their protectors into their confidence and make friends with them. The Government also maintains that if the law is taken lightly, incidents of crime would multiply in the society. So the law enforcing need be aggressive and violent. I do not know who thought up of the dictum, a very wise man by the look of it. Anyway it is religiously adhered to by the Police in our land. The physical violence they can inflict on their victims are reportedly spine chilling.

In this society they are a separate entity all together. People generally do not mix with them . None wants to be known as a patsy. They would think twice before marrying their girls off to a member of the force. There is a firm belief that the sin’s of the parents are visited upon the children, and people say that most of the children of the members of the force, especially those of an extremely brutal character tends to be born with various abnormalities. I am not sure about this, I have not conducted a survey on this, but that is what I hear generally.

The spread of awareness about law and mobilization of marginalized and unorganized sectors of the public in various civil forums and the growth of a strong under world in the land have all resulted in major complications for the police. Some of them are getting beaten up too.  People are generally non-co-operative where they are concerned and in some incidents have known to be dead against them also.

All this may have prompted a change in their approach. Well let us hope that this would last and the police would be a helping hand to the general public.